Control Your Accounts With My Budget

Managing your money can be a hard task. Whether it is buying a coffee in town or paying your electricity bill, everything will come out of your account and sometimes you don’t know where the money has gone. With the introduction of internet banking this is easier but it’s still often hard to really remember why an unknown £25 has magically disappeared. Tracking all this in a secure place is necessary for keeping on top of your money and with your Windows Phone this isn’t a difficult task.

My Budget is a £0.79 application which lets you manage expenses, bills and much more in an easy to read format. Being on your phone, the device you take everywhere, this app fits perfectly into anyone’s daily life and can prove beneficial.

Read on to find out more!

First Steps

First things first, downloading the application. There are two versions of this in the Marketplace, a lite version which is free and the full version which costs £0.79 — there is also a three day trial which you can try out before you buy. The differences aren’t massive but they do include the chance to save your data through Dropbox.

After downloading the first thing you need to do is adding your accounts. For this you don’t need to input any personal information being just a name and a balance. The fields you need to fill in are: Name and Account Type, this can either be: “Bank Account”, “Cash”, “Credit Card” or “Gift Card”. I love that you can place a gift card on this app so you really are controlling everything you spend.

Adding different accounts is an easy process.

The other fields which aren’t necessary are: “Starting Balance” and “Credit Limit.” These aren’t really needed but may make the process easier. Once you’ve inputted all your account’s they will all be displayed for viewing on a separate page. Clicking on these will allow you to see all deposits and withdrawals in a simple format.

Expenses and Income

Now you’ve got your accounts the next step is actually inputting what you’re spending. Let’s say I bought a £1.79 cup of tea from Starbucks. I’ll go into the app and click on expense, this will bring up an interface which lets me type in the details. Firstly, I enter the name “Starbucks Tea.” Next down is expense type, here I pick food then can choose much I estimate I spend on this every month. I can then enter the date, amount spent, account used and a comment on the expense. Clicking save records this data and places it on my overview of January expenses. I can also track all payments on a particular day when clicking on the day by day tracker.

The main page for adding expenses and incomes.

Income works the same way too. After adding the name and category you can choose the withdrawal and deposit account. One field which I quite liked was that you can choose the recurrence of this fee — meaning you don’t have to type in the same thing every single month/week/year. The feature to setup bills is here too. Again with the fields you can track anything you want.

All this data is then moved into charts and graphs which can be transformed for the things you would like to track.

Settings

Going into the settings you are again thrown with a range of different options and fields. The first is creating new categories such as food or education — helping you to differentiate between different expenses. You can also change your language and enable tile notification. On the next page you can choose to backup your data to avoid losing everything you’ve inputted.

Managing expenses with trackers.

One thing I did find refreshing is the ability to create a password. By making a simple four digit code (probably best not to use your PIN number) you can lock the whole app from mischievous eyes — giving you some protection when friends or family use your device too.

Why Use My Budget?

When spending money everyday all of us need a way to keep on top of things. My Budget does this perfectly by allowing you to input everything which would decrease or increase your balance. As you can see the process is relatively simple and won’t take any longer than thirty seconds to add the purchase of a cup of tea. But, in the long run it will prove beneficial. You will be able to look back at past months and see what you bought during that time.

My Budget shows all your expenditure in easy to understand charts.

Doubling as a money saver is the main reason I use My Budget. When I started using the application I saw that I was spending a bit too much on irrelevant things which I didn’t really need. This app allowed me to track these payments and cut them out of everyday life and saving me a few pounds every day. When money is hard to come by and needs to be managed, My Budget is something which can really help you.

Wrap-Up

All in all, My Budget is a fantastic application. With great functionality and easy to navigate interface users aren’t going to be confused in a hurry — starting to use all of its capabilities from the onset. And for £0.79 you really can’t go wrong here, My Budget could end up saving you much more that and end up being a helpful companion to any Windows Phone user.

Do you manage your money with your Windows Phone? Could you fit My Budget into your everyday life? Let us know below!